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Recently, economist Erik Andersen circulated a paper discussing government liabilities and the games played by governments to disguise unconscionable growth of debt during non-recessionary times. I’ve expanded Erik’s words and we hope the following discussion will be understandable and helpful.

What kind of society do we live in when there are no resources – no affordable resources, that is – for families in need, yet there is sufficient money to pay almost a million dollars for vanity photography and videotaping of Premier Clark. And billions of dollars to subsidize foreign-owned resource companies and billions more to pay contractors and private producers for power we don’t need.

While BC Liberals and ardent supporters such as the Fraser Institute claim to favour free markets, private power contracts show how false the commitment is. We can’t know the price paid for AltaGas power in BC because contracts are secret but the amount is certainly more than three times the $33 per MWh market price paid in Alberta. This demonstrates why big businesses in this province are putting up big dollars to ensure Liberals continue controlling government. British Columbia is rich in natural resources but Christy Clark and friends are determined that profits should accrue to very wealthy friends and are not to be wasted on ordinary citizens.

Site C, which was approved without a proper review by the B.C. Utilities Commission, is going to cost $8.8 billion we don’t have to produce electricity we can’t use, to power LNG plants that won’t exist, at a cost too expensive to sell to foreign markets…

Candidates were asked a simple question at an April 20 Tri-Cities campaign meeting: Do you support the privatization of our healthcare system? Liberal incumbent Linda Reimer gave a revealing answer: I do […]

Occasionally, readers and informants send me tips and information, some of it for background, some of it that leads directly to an article. Today, I received the first draft of a message that Pamela Martin is sending to Liberal Party workers. It follows…

SNC-Lavalin has a 100% interest in the new John Hart power generating facility near Campbell River. It remains under construction and is a considerable way from completion. However, even though SNC-Lavalin, the scandal-plagued company that has been banned from World Bank funded contracts for ten years, owns 100% of the project, it is costing BC taxpayers plenty. Keep in mind that not a single KWh of electricity has been delivered from the new John Hart facility and another year has passed since Hydro’s last FIA report of expenditures. According to its annual Financial Information Act returns to March 2016, BC Hydro paid almost half a billion dollars to the organization that owns 100% of the John Hart project.

On April 8, Vancouver Sun published an opinion piece by BC Hydro Chair Brad Bennett titled B.C. Hydro, vision, planning and fortitude — getting the job done. The Vancouver Sun does not identify Bennett as a partisan campaigner in BC’s current general election. In the article, Bennett applauds Liberal power policies and repeats an outrageous lie that has been part of BC Hydro’s misinformation strategy for more than 12 years.

This woman has no shame. If you asked her on Monday for the day of the week, she would tell you it was Thursday. She’s incapable of giving a straight answer. She’s leaving our children and their children with an immense financial burden and tells lies while doing it.

Before BC’s last provincial election, the governing party was trailing in the polls, still suffering from the HST fiasco, their failed effort to shift sales tax burdens from businesses to individuals. Premier Clark’s handlers decided to weave her a new set of clothes. When first shown to the public, oblivious cheerleaders in the corporate media rose in unison to applaud. Like the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, alternative media revealed the truth.

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The BC Business Party told many contemptuous lies during its tenure but ones involving LNG were the largest. The captured corporate media crew in BC's Legislative Press Gallery facilitated Liberal untruthfulness by failing to look behind or beyond government press releases. Attentive research would have convinced any objective researcher that government […]

In the May 2017 election, only two of the main parties committed to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. BC Liberals were uncomfortable with clauses related to informed consent that would interfere with business of their corporate donors. John Horgan's NDP Government and Andrew Weaver's Green Party committed to a diff […]

With news the BC Ferries vessel Spirit of British Columbia is about to sail to Europe for an extensive refit, I bump this article back to the top. - In October 2015, the Commissioner approved $173 million for the project but, as evidenced by the confidential order three months later, increased the approved amount by $46 million to $219 million. Instead of fi […]

Brady Yauch is an economist at the Consumer Policy Institute (CPI), which identifies itself as “an independent think-tank dedicated to achieving lower costs and greater efficiencies for Canadian consumers, particularly in sectors run by government monopolies or those receiving large subsidies.” Mr. Yauch published a powerful examination of mismanagement at u […]

In modern times, the Canadian union movement has lost influence but not relevance. It is easy to forget that unions enabled a broad middle class. Workers in unionized company towns in BC’s 20th century resource economy set the bar for others. They showed how positive full employment with good wages enables high quality life for the entire community.

When Encana's founding CEO Gwyn Morgan became Christy Clark's transition team advisor, natural gas producers knew they'd bet on a good thing. After six years of Clark, we now see just how good that thing was for gas companies.

When a new government takes office, there is often a significant change at senior levels of the civil service and among OIC political appointments. One person still employed by the Horgan government may surprise more than a few people.

I'm hopeful that writers and readers in the online world of BC politics will find a suitable way to remember and celebrate Merv Adey. He took a serious interest in improving political reporting and perhaps a bursary or award in Merv's name to a worthy student of journalism would be appropriate. Let me know if you agree.

When British Columbia conducts LNG negotiations behind closed doors, without public statements of principles or bargaining frameworks, citizens should worry. I have written about our government's willingness to provide the gas industry with 9-figure production subsidies and Liberal aversion to collection of natural gas royalties but there is another sub […]

Muskrat Falls was always a done deal, and a bad one says Pam Frampton, Saint John’s Telegram. "One week the project was all about clean energy, the next it was job creation, then it was all about being an affordable energy source, then it was a means of foiling Quebec, then it was a lure for mining companies.” The Progressive Conservatives’ sales pitch […]